The Early Years

What's New

The Early Years are covered in "Module Y1: The Early Years", "Module Y2: The Early Years II", and "Module Y3: The Early Years III". The Early Years covers the time period when the empires are first gaining their warp capabilities, allowing them to expand much more quickly and smash into each other. Early Years ships are far less capable than their "modern" counterparts that most players are familiar with. Their engines produced less power, resulting in slower speeds; they have fewer heavy weapons, and no overloads; they only have phaser-2s; the various systems have reduced capacities (e.g. transporters only work out to 3 hexes and tractors to one).

Module Y1 introduces the era and its history, and shows two empires that were prominent during the Early Years, but who did not survive until the "modern" era: the Paravians and the Carnivon. Module Y2 fleshes out all of the fleets, adding additional classes and support ships, and adds in the early history of the ISC. Module Y3 provides many support units and missing ships from the first part of the Early Years.

In addition to the above three modules that are purely focused on the Early Years, there is one other sources for Early Years information. It is the very new, Module R4J: Shadow of the Eagle. This module is focused on Romulan alternative histories that allow them to gain warp power earlier. As such, it includes many warp-power Romulan Early Years ships that work fine in the overall system if sublight Romulans aren't interesting enough.

Primary Empires

Over time, I will continue to add alternative or additional ships that will never be published. However, since not everything has been rejected yet, I haven't put up as many as I would like.

The empires and fleets represented in the Early Years Modules are:
General: Bases for each empire are provided in Y1. Y2 and Y3 add more general units and ground bases.
Federation: Both the early Star Fleet fleet and the earlier Federation National ships.
Klingon: Less capable versions of their fleet, including the "3" (C3/D3/F3) and "4" (C4/D4/F4) series.
Romulan: Though they are only sublight, they still have some tricks up their sleeves.
Kzinti: Only use drones and phasers.
Gorn: They develop more slowly because of the lack of need.
Tholian: All of the available Tholian ships are already published in the main game material.
Orion: The basis for their modern forces. They only appear at the end of the Early Years.
Hydran: Their pre-conquered fleet. These are the ships that fled to the Old Colonies.
Lyran: Like the Klingons, these are less capable versions of the "modern" fleet.
WYN: They only get started at the very end of the Early Years, and so only get a frigate and a couple freighters.
ISC: The early ISC and their formative national fleets are the centerpiece of Y2.
Paravian: Arch-nemesis and fanatical persecutors of the Gorns.
Carnivon: Caught in the crossfire between the Lyrans and Kzintis and taking on both!

Other Empires

The Andromedans did not arrive in our galaxy until Y165. If they had arrived earlier, their technology would have been unchanged. And everyone would have died.
The LDR didn't exist until the General War era. And even if they did, it would be (technologically) irrelevant since gatling phasers had not yet been invented.
The Seltorians, like the Andromedans had not yet arrived. If they did, the Tholians would presumably be dead. Their technology would have been unchanged. It is unknown how they would have acted after killing off the Tholians.
The Jindarians were around, but not bothering anyone. Or, more properly, no one was bothering them. Since their technology was also unchanged, anyone who ran across them would have been massively over-matched. As a result, everyone quickly learned to just leave them alone.
The Vudar were incorporated into the Klingon Empire sometime around Y76. They don't apparently start making their own ships until Y130, so they don't seem to have much potential for official Early Years ships.

Please send any comments to me at mjwest@caddocourt.com. I will try to include any suggestions I like.

Go back to my SFB main page. (Including my General War era shipyard and SFB links.)

The Early Years pages were initially inspired after seeing the sites done by John Kim (now gone) and Art Braun (aka Negh'Var) (also gone).

Page last modified 12/22/22.

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